Pike River Tragedy

The Pike River tragedy is undoubtedly one of the more horrific events to occur in New Zealand’s history and has had a long lasting impact right across the mining industry, prompting several reforms to regulation as a result. The tragedy consisted of 4 powerful explosions over the course of 9 days, resulting in the death of 16 miners and 13 contractors. Two of the miners working for Pike River, Russel Smith and Daniel Rockhouse escaped the explosion injured, yet able to walk out of the mine.

After the first explosion at 3:45pm on November 19th 2010 the mine was shut down and rescue efforts commenced. Five days later on November 24th at 2:37pm, the mine exploded again which confirmed rescue teams fears that the men trapped inside the mine would no longer still be alive. The mine then exploded twice more, once at 3:39pm on November the 26th and again at 1:55pm on the 28th of November.

Leading up to the first explosion there had been major concern for the health and safety of the workers, with several accounts of incidents around the pit which were not favourable. “In the last 48 days before the explosion there were 21 reports of methane levels reaching explosive volumes, and 27 reports of lesser, but potentially dangerous, volumes”. Through methane monitoring it had become evident that conditions were unstable and dangerous levels of methane had been developing in sections of the mine.

Methane is violently explosive at levels between 5% and 15% by volume in air. It its believed that an accumulation of methane in the goaf area behind the hydro panel, perhaps expelled by a roof fall releasing additional strata gas into ventilated airways, is the most probable cause of the accident. The methane could have accumulated in fuel-rich concentrations within the goaf, and then become diluted by the ventilation, forcing the explosive fringe towards possible ignition sources.

The specific source of ignition and exact reason for the ingress of methane